Perhaps inspired by the example of Treasury Secretary Timothy “Turbo-tax” Geithner, 41 White House aides owe a collective $831,000 in back taxes. And, as the LA Times’ Andrew Malcolm explains, the problem isn’t just limited to the West Wing:

Over the years a lot of suspicion has built up across the country about Washington and its population of opportunistic transients coming to see themselves as a special kind of person, somehow above average working Americans who don’t work down in that former swamp.

Well, finally, an end to all those undocumented doubts. Thanks to some diligent digging by the Washington Post, those suspicions can at last be put to rest.

They’re correct. Accurate. Dead-on. Laser-guided. On target. Bingo-bango. As clear as it’s always seemed to those Americans who don’t feel special entitlements and do meet their government obligations.

We now know that federal employees across the nation owe fully $1 billion in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.

And here’s just one example:

In the House of Representatives, 421 people owe a total $6,524,892. In the Senate, 217 owe $2,774,836. In the IRS’ parent department, Treasury, 1,204 owe $7,670,814. At the Labor Department, where Secretary Hilda Solis’ husband had some back-tax problems before her confirmation, 463 owe $7,481,463. Eighty-one workers for the Federal Reserve System’s board of governors owe $1,076,733.

Yet Congress wants to raise taxes on all of us to pay for health care and all the other stupid ideas wonderful reforms its enacted?

“Obedience to the law is for thee, not for me!” cried the oligarch.

Maybe they should garnish the deadbeats’ wages until the backlog is cleared, instead. Just a thought.

So, the whole point of ObamaCare (well, one of the points) is to put private insurance companies out of business and pave the way for single-payer national health care:

And yet, when those same targeted private insurance companies complain about ObamaCare and raise rates to meet the new costs it imposes, the President’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, gets annoyed and tells them to shut up and take it, or they’ll be put out of business even sooner:

President Barack Obama’s top health official on Thursday warned the insurance industry that the administration won’t tolerate blaming premium hikes on the new health overhaul law.

“There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a letter to the insurance lobby.

“Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections,” Sebelius said. She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law. They’d lose out on a big pool of customers, as many as 30 million people nationwide.

In other words, company executives who dare exercise their First Amendment rights to speak the truth about the harm ObamaCare will do to their firms will… get hurt.

For some strange reason, I’m picturing Frank Nitti, backed by a couple of his goons, in an insurance CEO’s office looking around and saying “Nice company youse got here. Be a shame if something happened to it.”

Must be a coincidence on my part.

LINKS: Ed Morrissey see this as evidence that the entire administration is peevish, not just the President.

The Government Accountability Office says a Medicare mailer sent out by Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, to Medicare recipients on the new health-care law isn’t accurate.

In fact, according to the GAO, the brochure, which cost $18 million in taxpayer dollars to publish and emanated from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, presented a view of the health reform law that is “not universally shared,” that it “overstated the benefits” of health reform,” and that it failed to note the possibility of less generous Medicare benefits and higher costs.

While the GAO cleared the administration of putting together a purely partisan or propagandizing brochure, it was nonetheless critical of its content.

The Hill reports that this morning the President will be taking his first series of questions from a “hungry press” since a spring presser:

With his presidency at a crossroads, President Obama will face the media Friday at his first press conference since the spring.

As an increasing number of political analysts predict Republicans will win the House this fall, Obama on Friday will defend his economic policies and hope to fend off questions about his weakened political standing.

The key for Obama will be to stay on message — vote Democrat or return to the policies of the George W. Bush administration — as reporters try to get the president to make news.

Obama addressed some of the most burning questions by sitting down for a TV interview while traveling to Cleveland on Wednesday.

In an interview with George Stephanopolous for ABC’s “Good Morning America” that aired Thursday, Obama was asked repeatedly about Republican criticisms of his economic policies and the coming debate over whether to extend Bush’s tax cuts.

Obama refused to threaten a veto over the increasing likelihood that Congress will extend all of the tax cuts for a year or two, which would hand the GOP a victory.

The president also voiced confidence that his party will win the midterm elections this fall, despite polls suggesting Republicans have a good chance of winning the House and an outside chance of winning the Senate.

“I am very confident that if people know what the choice is, if people take a look at what Democrats stand for and what Republicans stand for, who we’re fighting for, and who they’re fighting for, then we will win,” Obama said.

No matter the question, Obama on Friday can be expected to try to mark a contrast between his policies and those of Republicans. He’ll try to build on the themes he offered in his speech on the economy this week in Cleveland, when he said Republicans have no new ideas or policies. Obama argues a new GOP majority in Congress would rule like the last one, which he blames for the recession and financial crisis.

Here are my quote predictions:

– “Let me be clear”
– “I inherited …”
– “Bush’s fault”
– “The economy has turned a corner”
– “We need to get our ‘fiscal house’ in order – by keeping taxes for ‘the rich’ high”
– “What Republican ideas?”
– “What type of dog was I referring to when I said Republicans talk about me like I’m a dog? I’m not answering that.”
– “Joe Biden was on Colbert?”